Press Room

Aida Pharmaceuticals, Inc. today announced an update on its testing of Rh-Apo2L, the next large-scale product to be launched by the Company into the China market. Aida previously announced that it had successfully passed its Phase I tests in July 2006, which consists of tests for safety, dosage and the potential cancer treatments to be tested in Phases II & III. Aida is currently undergoing Phase II testing of Rh-Apo2L testing through China's SFDA, the national drug regulatory agency.
Source: Aida Pharmaceuticals

Researchers at the School of Medicine and the Abramson Cancer Center will lead a nationwide trial of anti-cancer drug combinations in patients with advanced kidney cancer, according to a Penn Medicine press release.
"This trial takes three proven drugs, and combines then into two drug combinations," Medicine Keith Flaherty said in a statement. "They all seem to attack blood vessel formation in somewhat unique ways, so we think we could get a more profound effect by combining them."
The three drugs, bevacizumab, sorafenib and temsirolimus, have been shown to slow the progression of metastic cancer when used alone by starving the cancer cells of the oxygenated blood required for growth.
Flaherty and other researchers will determine which combination is most effective by seeing how long it takes patients' tumors to start growing again while on treatment.
The longer the period of progression-free treatment, the more effective the drug combination is.
The results of the trial may influence how other cancers, including breast, lung and colon cancers, are treated.
University researchers will collaborate with the Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group, a network of researchers, physicians and health care professionals, for the trial.
Source: The Daily Pennsylvanian

Exelixis, Inc. today announced that data from ongoing phase 2 trials of XL880 and XL647 in papillary renal cell carcinoma and non-small cell lung cancer, respectively, will be presented at the 2007 AACR-NCI-EORTC International Conference on Molecular Targets and Cancer Therapeutics, which will be held October 22-26, 2007 in San Francisco. In addition, phase 1 data for XL184, which inhibits MET, VEGFR2 and RET, will also be presented. In total, 13 abstracts for eight compounds have been accepted for poster presentation at the conference, reporting data from clinical trials or preclinical studies of XL880, XL647, XL184, XL147, XL765, XL820, XL844 and XL518.
Source: Exelixis, Inc and pharmalive.com

Postmenopausal women who are overweight or obese appear to have a greater risk of developing, renal cell carcinoma, a common form of kidney cancer, and study findings suggest that a larger waist girth and a history of weight loss and regain further increase this risk.
Source: American Journal of Epidemiology
"Our study suggests that the risk of renal cell carcinoma can be lowered if overweight individuals lose excess central body fat and then maintain stable weight at a more desirable level," Dr. Juhua Luo, of Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, Sweden told Reuters Health.

A staging system that accounts for interactions among tumor stage and grade and patient performance status offers a reliable and reproducible means for predicting mortality after surgery for renal cell carcinoma, investigators reported here.
Source: Urology Times
Survival decreased in a linear fashion as the staging system-derived level of patient risk increased. The association remained intact for follow-up at 5, 10, and 15 years, and the system accurately projected survival for patients with localized or metastatic kidney cancer, according to a presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.
Survival decreased in a linear fashion as the staging system-derived level of patient risk increased. The association remained intact for follow-up at 5, 10, and 15 years, and the system accurately projected survival for patients with localized or metastatic kidney cancer, according to a presentation at the American Society of Clinical Oncology annual meeting.